Sunday, April 20, 2014

Special Effects in Animation and Live-Action

Special Effects in
the film industry has grown tremendously, this method gives a film a cool feel,
It is an interesting way to tell a story in a more believable way. Many
directors have used many elements to make their films more interesting since
the end of the 1800s. Directors have used animation, and stop motion to make a
believable story and capture the audience’s attention. Movies such as the King
Kong are a perfect way of using stop motion, and many more special effects were
added to many other films that it became a really important part of the film
industry. In the 1990’s computer
Generated imagery (CGI) had evolved and gave the filmmaker the opportunity to
be much more realistic and maintain safety while doing the effects. Computer revolutionized
the way audience see movies because of its possibilities and the endless amount
of effects that can be created and added it films. In this paper I will compare
special effect between the waves from the movie Deep Impact (1998) and the
waves from the animated movie Surf’s Up. They both are computer generated and
they are both realistic waves and oceans although in different styles.

Deep
Impact

In
the movie Deep Impact (1998) the water looks very realistic although it might
not be correct in terms of speed, force, texture the especial effect artist did
a very good job to make it believable. The transparency and the waves are very
well executed and framed nicely to give the up and down shot a very dramatic
scene. The transparency of this effect is close to the real liquid and it has a
nice feel of volume that makes it look heavy. In the movie Deep Impact, when
water is about to destroy New York city, it show the waves rise very high that
the actual scene looks very realistic. This special effect might have taken a ton
of computer-generated power to render; it is close to what would have happened
in the real scenario. However, many steps took place in order to made the scene
look real. For example, when the waves destroy the bridge, the artist had to
take off the plate of the bridge and replace it with a CG model.

Many of the special effects were created
using Softimage software and ILM’s proprietary code. The set that they built
the bridge, overtaking, the building, the cars, and the debris were made in Maya
3D or Alias back in 1998. And many live action shots took place and were
replaced with the CG model when they showed the destruction.The artist had to used tons of
references on how the ocean and waves behaves and well as the study of physics.
Artist also many scientific theory on how the water behave after the comet hits
the ocean just like in the movie deep impact. The particle system that they
used was a better choice but they couldn’t tell what was the exact result after
rendering. This effect took a long time to render since they rendered several
million particles and they had to use all the processors that they had in spite
of the powerful system that ILM had in place.

Surf
up is a very interesting and complex animated movie. The way the production
used and integrated of live action and the wave rig system was unique because
of the way the animator interacted and animated the waves. However the system
was too sensitive that it could make the controls used to animate the waves look
unrealistic. At the same time to animate the waves they had to use a lot of
references on how water behaves, surface, trails, as well as whitewater
simulation. Animating the waves was a real challenge, as well as the care and
time that it took to make the waves work the waves were animated so the secondary
effect would follow in a nice manner. This wave animation was rendered in Maya,
Houdini, and render Man software. This process took many months, Parts of the
wave was made from Nurbes Primitives in Maya3D software and used many blend
shapes and lofted curves profile to made the waves, which were placed together
to made the waves. Many tests have to be done to make the look believable and
many wave trains. Animators used the Wave Visualizer system to simplify the
visual of the waves on how it was going to behave. Many particles were used to achieve
the look of whitewater or splash effect. Many other steps took place in order
to make the water.Rendering the
ocean by itself was or made a hole in the ocean with the displacement shader
was the best way to combine the ocean and the waves.

There were many other difficulties
or considerations about making a wave. The process took many months to develop,
such as wave patch, energy, wave variation and direction, but most of all the
most difficult task was to make the waves crashing from cross section. In
addition, the other difficult part was to add motion blur to the waves in order
to make it look very realistic.

Many
filmmakers have innovated the use of computers to make something much more
believable, and safe when making complex scene where it needs to show an explosion,
fire, blast, or any other dangerous attempt in place of creating a real explosion.
In the 1930’s many of the movies had created the special effects by using the
stop motion to create an effect that the characters were actually moving. Even
today the movies from that time still look very realistic. But with the
invention of the computer it is easier to make something very complex in order
to make something look very realistic. CGI has helped the filmmakers to make
live action, animated 3D films in a way that tells a story in a very convincing
way. In these movies Deep Impact and Surf’s Up, the waves are very realistic
even though they each are very different. One is more realistic and the other
is a stylized, but at the same time both are very complex to do but believable.

About Me

Juan Maya.
San Jose, California, United States.
I'm a student at San Jose State University and I am part of the animation/illustration program. My inspiration is to become a professional 2D-3D animator, visual effects and concept artist. I would like to learn the fundamentals for a good design.